Immigration officials have asked permission to destroy records of sexual abuse, death and solitary confinement, among others, in detention facilities.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement would get rid of sexual abuse and death in custody records after 20 years and solitary confinement records after three years. Advocates and government watchdog groups are worried that eradication of such records would make it more difficult to know what conditions are like inside immigration detention facilities, which are often owned and operated by private prison companies that have contracts with the federal government.

“We have an agency that does a lot of self-monitoring and self investigation, and there’s not sufficient opportunity for public scrutiny of their operations,” said Victoria Lopez, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project. “It makes the documents they’re proposing to destroy even more important.”

Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for ICE, said getting rid of these records is routine, government record maintenance.

“ICE is working to be in full compliance with the federal records authority,” Mack said.

Federal government agencies cannot destroy records without permission from the National Archives and Records Administration. Agencies can request permission to get rid of certain types of records on scheduled intervals.

An official from the National Archives has preliminarily approved ICE’s request with the justification that sexual abuse and assault files as well as investigations into deaths in custody do “not document significant actions of federal officials.” For the solitary confinement records, the official said that such records have “little or no research value” as reason for getting rid of them.

Miriam Kleiman, spokeswoman for the National Archives, said that between two and five percent of records reviewed each year become permanent. The rest are scheduled for destruction on timelines based on when they are no longer needed for the government agency to conduct business.

“NARA regularly appraises death review and investigation files as temporary,” Kleiman said, referring to two destruction schedules that get rid of records relating to federal prisoner deaths on two-year and five-year intervals.

ICE’s proposed timeline, which destroys death records after 20 years, is now in a public comment period before it can go into effect.

Even though 20 years might seem like a long time, Lopez said destroying such records at all would make it more difficult to research long-term trends.

“Those documents are important, certainly from a legal perspective, but also in terms of being able to see how and whether the law or policy around this particular issue is shaped over time,” Lopez said. “Much of the information that we know about deaths in immigration detention are a result of public advocacy and people demanding that the agency be more transparent and open.”

ICE does not have the authority to hold people in its detention facilities as punishment. It is a civil detention system.

The agency can only detain people if it believes they won’t show up for their court dates or that they would be dangerous to society if released. Because of that distinction from criminal detention, which is intended as punishment, advocates say it’s especially important to be able to monitor what happens in immigration detention.

Immigration detainees held in segregation, especially those with mental health issues, became a spotlighted issue in 2013 when a New York Times investigation revealed that many detainees were being held for at least 15 days at a time in isolation. The article prompted a public outcry and a review of ICE policies. The agency announced new internal reporting requirements later that year to monitor segregated housing conditions.

There are two types of solitary confinement, disciplinary segregation and administrative segregation. Bardis Vakili, senior staff attorney at the local ACLU, said that while disciplinary is intended to punish those who break facility rules and administrative is often for those who need protection from the general detained population, they look almost identical in practice. Both take a psychological toll on the isolated person.

He said the ACLU represented a man in 2015 who spent more than 200 days in administrative segregation.

The San Diego Union-Tribune requested records in May 2016 for local detention facilities to see how the 2013 segregated housing policy has been implemented. ICE closed the request without filling it earlier this year.

Given the agency’s sometimes slow responses to public records requests, advocates are also concerned that records might be destroyed while requests for them are still pending. According to ICE, some detention information would also be in other agency records, such as an individual immigrant’s file, which is a permanent record.

ICE had 621 pending requests at the end of fiscal 2016, according to a Department of Homeland Security report.

The FOIA project, which monitors public records requests to the federal government, criticized the agency in a report last week that ICE often waits until the end of the fiscal year to push out responses and close old requests.

“Answers to some requests are needlessly delayed in violation of timeliness requirements in the law,” the report says. “The quality of some responses that requesters receive surely suffer in such an intense push to close cases. And the pressure on FOIA staff to cut corners to speed case closures can hardly make the office a desirable place to work.”

Lopez said members of the public can comment on the proposed destruction of documents before Sept. 15 by emailing request.schedule@nara.gov.

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New developments in family separation case

New developments in family separation case

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New developments in family separation case

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Tensions flared as police posted signs around Cannon Park threatening to arrest anyone who participated in a rally.

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According to staff there, about 10 percent of the children held in Casa San Diego were separated from their parents at the border — an issue that has led to massive protests across the country. The rest arrived on their own.

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Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans in favor of a deal to protect 'Dreamers' want to drive a wedge between Trump and hardliners on his staff. (Oct. 9, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans in favor of a deal to protect 'Dreamers' want to drive a wedge between Trump and hardliners on his staff. (Oct. 9, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)